Gearbox's Borderlands 2 is Being Influenced by Robocop?

In meet up at a recent preview event for Borderlands 2, VG247 managed to meet up with Kevin Duc, Gearbox's lead concept artist. From their meet up, the public found out the concept of the visual style for Gearbox's upcoming game. To much of everyone's surprise, he draws the concept from a unique source.

"With loose art comes a vitality that allows story to be more free and level design to become a little more extreme. There's a nice back and forth that develops with [the art team] expressing the ideas that [the story writers] have created and realizing the crazy and dark characters. This means we can be a bit wacky with proportions but at the same time we keep this idea that we refer to as the Verhoeven effect. It's the RoboCop concept; that there's this extreme violence going on but with a touch of comedy which is making you laugh even when you’re being ripped in half. The art style definitely plays to that."
~Kevin Duc, Lead Concept Artist for Gearbox

This concept carries over to weapons in a significant way also. As each manufacturer will gain unique attributes and have a distinct visual style to show that off. This leads players to change their loadout based on their playing style in the game. In addition of the various skill trees built into each class, it makes a unique experiences across every single class and makes it fun to play around with multiple classes. Which proves that Borderlands 2 will be a great game to pick up this Fall.